The Demon Catchers of Milan #2: The Halcyon Bird Read Online Free

some tourist leans in close to a flame, and I wonder if they are about to accidentally swallow a demon.But my family has been doing things this way for centuries; I’m pretty sure there are more protections than I know about.
    I love the candle shop. I love the smell of the wood and the beeswax, the ghosts of sulfur matches, and the way that, when the door to the street closes, I feel like I am in another century. For me, the shop really has been a sanctuary, and still is.
    More than anyone else at the exorcism we had just left, I knew what that man and woman had gone through. I knew what it meant to have another mind invade my body.
    I hadn’t really allowed myself to remember, not all the way. Not yet. Sometimes a part of it would come back to me, and I would remember floating through the air, making the books on the shelves ripple like dominoes. I tried not to remember what it was like to fling my sister against the wall.
    I was pretty sure she knew that I wasn’t the one who had done it.
    I remembered drifting down the stairs, the photos on the wall beside me falling and shattering, the sight of broken glass below my feet. I blinked and came back to myself, standing in the candle shop, Nonno Giuliano’s eyes on me.
    “You don’t need to be older than your sister,” he said. “You are old enough, as you are. Sit down! We need to write up our case notes before we go to bed.”
    He pointed at the chair across from him, and we both sat down at the desk, worn and oiled smooth by twelve generations of hands. He pushed a notebook in front of me. I saw it wasalready labeled:
Mia Gianna Della Torre, Taccuino numero 1
. He told me, “Write precisely what you remember. Each detail, even the ones that do not seem significant. Tell what you smelled and tasted. What you heard and saw and touched. And the impressions that came into your mind. See if you can remember the order of events. Practice! We will keep these notes for your great-grandchildren to read.”
    No pressure. I hadn’t realized until then that every family member who was present for an exorcism kept notes.
    I began to write and wrote until the words blurred in front of me. “Bed,” Nonno said, and steered me toward the stairs. He did not follow me, but stayed at the old oak desk, writing about lost souls in the lamplight.

TWO
The Demon’s Sonnet
    E very morning, the smell of Nonna Laura’s coffee tugs me back from my dreams. After the
San Valentino
exorcism, I woke up remembering what it was like to be able to see through walls and listen through skulls—memories of terrible helplessness and secondhand power, of being able to see and hear what others couldn’t.
    But I could smell the espresso Nonna was making in the kitchen, so I got up and got dressed.
    “Buon giorno,”
she muttered as I came in and kissed her on the cheek. She clashed dishes into the drying rack above the sink. I did a quick mental check to see if I was the reason she was crabby and decided I probably wasn’t.
    “It’s my leg,” she said, answering my unspoken question. “It’s sore again. Makes me cross as a bear. Did you sleep well? Coffee?”
    “Yes, please,” I said. She always offers, as if I might have changed my mind overnight, and I always accept. “Can I do anything? Run errands for you this morning?”
    “No, because you need to study.”
    Plan foiled. I would much rather have stepped out into the chill February air, smelling of diesel and rosemary and baking bread, than stayed inside with my books, even though they meant survival.
    She set a
caffè latte
in front of me. I swirled it around in the bowl, gazing down, and then took a sip.
    The Italians take their coffee seriously, and Milan is full of excellent cafés. I don’t know what Nonna does differently, but her
caffè latte
is always perfect. I took my time with it. The books could wait.
    While I sat, my cousin Francesca and her fiancé Égide emerged from their room down the hall and came into the kitchen,